30 Herret for deer?

[Mike from Texas]

Anybody have any experience with deer hunting with a .30 Herret? I have a buddy who has loaned me his T/C Contender in 30 Herret to hunt does and spikes on a management hunt in South Texas. The round is very impressive as far as accuracy is concerned, but I'm not familiar with the ballistics or performance on deer sized game.

[bigbulls]

This is from "THE RELOADING BENCH" web site.

Introduced in the Thompson/Center Contender in 1973, the 30 Herret was a joint development of the late Steve Herrett and Bob Melek. Basically a shortened version of the Winchester .30-30 cartridge, the .30 Herret was once quite popular among handgun hunters and silhouette competitors. Case forming dies are available from most manufacturers of handloading dies.

The .30 Herritt is an extremely fine cartridge for the Contender, one that is extremely effective on deer size game. But when both are loaded to the same chamber pressures for 10 and 14 inch barrels, the larger .30-30 produces from 100 to 200 fps higher velocities. Today, the popular thing to do among owners of barrels in this chambering is to have them rechambered for larger and faster cartridges. A barrel in .30 Herritt is easily rechambered by SSK Industries for the .300 Savage, .30-40 Krag, .30-40 Krag Improved, or .309 JDJ. The latter cartridge will push a 150 grain Spitzer from a 14 inch barrel at 2500 fps, considerable faster than is possible with the .30 Herritt.

As a deer cartridge, the .30 Herrett is probably seen at its best in a 14 inch barrel with a Speer 130 grain flat nose or Sierra 125 grain Spitzer loaded to about 2200 fps.

Perhaps the .30 Herrett should be remembered as an excellent idea introduced at the right time, one greatly responsible for creating a considerable amount of interest in hunting deer size game with single shot handguns.

[mwb6700]

Well, I have a 10-in. bbl .30 Herrett, and have killed several East Tex. whitetails with it. This was before the availability of single shot pistol bullets - we had to use .30 cal. varmint bullets then. I used both a 110-gr. spire point and 130-gr. HP. The spire point was best, but I had to keep with square-on chest shots. It was fun, but I was hunting heavy brush area, and the bullets weren't fully penetrating, and not leaving me much of a blood trail. Swapped to a 14-in. .44 Mag, used 250-gr. Keiths and 240-gr. silhouette bullets with great success. With stouter SS pistol bullets, the .30 Herrett should be a lot of fun. The 10-inch bbl. will give you a headache from the muzzle blast hunting out of box stands; try dusky-dark shots and see what a fireball! I found that the T-C, Bob Milek and others recommendations about loads to be exactly right - just barely shy of max loads were always the most accurate. H110, IMR 4227 worked well. Off-hand, standing with a 2X Leupold can keep all shots in a 6-inch circle at 200 yards!. With a rest can do better than 1 MOA. Sight it in like you will shoot it, out of box blinds had to hold down on the top of the scope to avoid bashing the glass in recoil on the top of the window. Would like to hear how it goes for you.